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As usual, the strong tournaments organized in Danzhou, China have not been widely publicized outside the Asian country. The main event, an 8-player double round robin with four Chinese players and four international starts kicked off on Thursday and will run through December 9, while a two-day women’s event with 10 participants took place on Friday and Saturday.
The “Belt and Road World Chess Women Summit” was a single round robin event with a time control of 15 minutes for the game and 5-second increments from move 1 (the main tournament is played at a 15+10 time control). Former women’s world champion Hou Yifan was the top seed and won the event with a 6½/9 score.
Due to the pandemic, the tournament took place online, although it was not fully virtual — the Chinese participants all gathered at the Country Garden Havana Holiday Hotel to play their games, much like their male counterparts. The games were played on the chess.com platform.
The strong event included five (out of the 13) women players with a 2500+ FIDE rating. In the end, the highest-rated woman player in the world — by quite a margin — prevailed, albeit after suffering losses against Lei Tingjie and Nana Dzagnidze. A full point behind Hou, 23-year-old Iranian star Sarasadat Khademalsharieh and former women’s world champion Tan Zhongyi tied for second place.
| Rk. | Name | Rtg | Pts. | |
| 1 | GM | Hou Yifan | 2658 | 6,5 |
| 2 | IM | Khademalsharieh Sarasadat | 2494 | 5,5 |
| 3 | GM | Tan Zhongyi | 2510 | 5,5 |
| 4 | GM | Lei Tingjie | 2505 | 5,0 |
| 5 | IM | Abdumalik Zhansaya | 2478 | 4,5 |
| 6 | GM | Muzychuk Mariya | 2544 | 4,5 |
| 7 | GM | Zhao Xue | 2486 | 3,5 |
| 8 | GM | Stefanova Antoaneta | 2466 | 3,5 |
| 9 | GM | Dzagnidze Nana | 2524 | 3,5 |
| 10 | IM | Atalik Ekaterina | 2450 | 3,0 |
Hou kicked off the event with four consecutive wins. In round 5, however, she was defeated by Dzagnidze out of an extremely sharp Sicilian. Hou had gone all-in from the get go, to which her Georgian colleague responded sharply, advancing on the kingside. Hou’s decisive mistake came on move 29:
The engines think White has the better position here, but the only way to keep the edge was to play 29.Kg1 (29.Qxg2 is not as good, but keeps the battle going as well). Instead, Hou’s 29.Kxg2 gave way to the lethal 29...Qg4+, when White is lost in every line:
White tried to swindle her way out with 30.Qg3 fxg3 31.Bb5+ axb5 32.Rd8+:
32...Kxe7 wins the game, but not 32...Rxd8 33.exd8Q#.
The highest-rated woman player in the world bounced back with a win over Tan Zhongyi, was defeated by Lei Tingjie, signed her only draw of the event against Khademalsharieh and secured first place with a victory over second seed Mariya Muzychuk in the last round.
